A story of resur­gence

Bangladesh has be­come one of Asia’s most re­mark­able and un­ex­pected suc­cess sto­ries in re­cent years. Af­ter its in­de­pen­dence in 1971 the coun­try re­mained rav­aged by poverty and floods for long, but then came an in­flec­tion point in 2006 when this poor­est econ­omy of South-east Asia posted eco­nomic growth faster than Pak­istan, which sur­prised many econ­o­mists and many in the world even took it as a fluke. But since then, there was no look­ing back and to­day the coun­try is grad­u­at­ing from be­ing a least de­vel­oped coun­try to join the league of de­vel­op­ing na­tions. The re­sults are al­ready vis­i­ble, Bangladesh has trans­formed from be­ing an agri-based econ­omy to an in­dus­tri­alised one over the decades. The con­tri­bu­tion of agri­cul­ture to the na­tion’s GDP has de­creased from 59.60 per cent in 1972 to 14.77 per cent in 2016, on the flip side the share of in­dus­try and ser­vice sec­tors in­creased to 28.76 per cent and 56.45 per cent re­spec­tively.

Bangladesh is now a reg­u­lar fea­ture in the top 10 fastest-grow­ing economies around the world. It grew at 7.28 per cent in the last fis­cal year and if this ac­cel­er­a­tion of econ­omy pro­gresses undis­turbed then it may well march past In­dia on the de­vel­op­men­tal path.

Bangladesh has a cur­rent per capita in­come of $1,610, its Hu­man As­sets In­dex (HAI) is 72.9 and Eco­nomic Vul­ner­a­bil­ity In­dex is 25. This feat en­ables Bangladesh to re­duce its eco­nomic risks, a ma­jor fac­tor con­sid­ered while mak­ing pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ments into the coun­try, it will fetch easy loans for eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment and at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment. A lot of in­vest­ment is al­ready go­ing into strength­en­ing mar­itime and lo­gis­tics in­fra­struc­ture, as Bangladesh is flex­ing its ca­pac­ity to use its nat­u­ral geo­graphic lo­ca­tion and trans­form into a “gate­way and con­nec­tiv­ity hub” be­tween South Asia and South­east Asia.

This back­ground gives us ev­ery rea­son to host the sec­ond edi­tion of South Asia Mar­itime and Lo­gis­tics Fo­rum in Dhaka. Join us on this unique plat­form to ex­plore busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in South Asia re­gion and con­nect with the right peo­ple. Se­ri­ous busi­ness dis­cus­sions dur­ing the day will be fol­lowed by an awards night that brings to­gether the who’s who in the in­dus­try to recog­nise and hon­our in­dus­try gi­ants who made a dif­fer­ence in what­ever they do.

See you in Dhaka! R Ram­prasad Ed­i­tor and Pub­lisher ram­prasad@gate­way­media.in

Bangladesh is grad­u­at­ing from be­ing a least de­vel­oped coun­try to join the league of de­vel­op­ing na­tions.